Elvendude (33 page)

Holding his head with both hands, he looked around; around the Sony TV he sensed the remains of a Gate recently dismissed. Evidently, Moira had eliminated his Unseleighe glamorie, as he now wore his usual attire: jeans, running shoes, a tank top.

The Unseleighe sword lay on the couch.
A fitting trophy,
Adam thought, pleased as well as a little sickened at the memory of the levin bolt. The rage that had consumed him earlier, when confronting the Unseleighe, was gone now. He felt a bit queasy, remembering how totally he'd annihilated them. He began to question whether he'd be able to do the same thing again, when confronted with Zeldan. Either answer disturbed him.

He stood up and instantly wished he hadn't.
This must be what a hangover feels like.

While in Underhill, he must have overdone the magic bit, he suspected. That would explain his headache, which far surpassed the one he suffered while healing Niamh. He looked around and saw a track of dust leading from the living room to the garage.
Our feet must have been covered with the dry soil of Underhill. But why did everyone go into the garage?

He shakily made his way in that direction, which passed through the kitchen, where he grabbed a cold, canned Gatorade.

"Hi, guys," Adam said from the open kitchen door as he popped the can open.

Spence, Marbann, Moira and Niamh stood around the wooden worktable, which had been dragged to the center of the garage floor. A bank of fluorescents lit the garage up a little too brightly for his headache.

"Your Majesty," Marbann said, looking up from the worktable. "How do you feel? Are you well?"

"Uh, no," he said, sipping the Gatorade. "My head's about to burst open. But that's the only damage I suffered. I think."

Marbann nodded, but looked disturbed. "That will pass, in time."

"I'm less than convinced," Adam replied, but what they were doing roused his curiosity more than a cure for his headache. Spence was working on the weapon they'd liberated from Underhill. The mechanism was clamped onto the portable worktable, with a rectangular metal plate removed from its stock, revealing a spaghetti mess of wires and circuit boards. In its present condition, the weapon looked completely harmless. Spence patiently soldered a wire to a circuit board, his face a mask of unbreakable concentration.

Niamh, who had tried to fix the weapon years back, looked on, visibly confused.

"I'm not sure what they had in mind here, when they made it," Spence said. "From what I can tell, it's not steel, but an aluminum magnesium casing, and may have originally been designed for mining or some other industrial purpose. It's missing something, though." He pulled some wires aside, revealing a compartment. "There's a space here. Looks like a battery went there, or something. Damned if I know what kind it was. Doesn't look like anything I've seen."

"Weren't the engineers in Underhill modifying it to use node power?" Moira pointed out. "Instead of a battery, maybe it used something else?"

Spence looked doubtful. "It must be something else. Down in the stock here are chambers for two nine-volt batteries, and they've already been replaced. In this other compartment, there are traces of node power. I wish I could talk to whoever was working on it." He paused to wipe sweat from his forehead. "But all the engineers died in the first wave."

Moira looked up at the King. "Adam, what do you think?"

Adam shrugged, still weary from the ordeal in Underhill. "I'm not sure I can think anything," he said, then he leaned over the table. Indeed, there was a space there, but it didn't look like a place a battery would go. The contacts were cupped, not smooth, like the inside of a flashlight, and were faceted. As if they held something that . . . 

Then he saw what it had to be. "A crystal," Adam said. "It must be."

He searched his pockets for what he hoped might work. His father's memory crystal was still in his pocket, and he pulled it out and handed it to Spence.

"I used it in Underhill," Adam explained. "When we were sealed off from the node energy, it was the only power source we had."

Marbann spoke up, "It acted more as a way of focusing the energy we already had among us. The crystal had a minimal amount of power stored in it."

Spence pointed at the weapon, gazing on it admirably. "This mechanism is one big lens for node power, whether by accident or design. Perhaps this crystal is just what we need. Everything else about the weapon appears to be operational, now that I've reconnected some of the loose wires."

He inserted the crystal, which was a bit small for the space. With a screwdriver he loosened one of the contacts, which slid against the crystal, clamping it in place. When he tightened it back, the weapon came to life.

A row of LED lights Adam hadn't noticed before came on, and a tinny, electronic whine, like the sound of a PC booting up, was emitted from somewhere in the stock.

"Now what?" Moira asked, as she stepped back from the weapon. "Do we dare try it here?"

Adam gave Moira a distressed look. "I know it's probably dangerous, but we have to know if it works or not," Adam said. Then, to Spence. "How do you use it?"

Spence pursed his lips, licked them nervously. He looked like he'd been out here a long time and was getting twitchy. "There's a safety near the trigger." He looked around the garage.

"What is that over there, in the corner?"

He was pointing to the big smoker that had been sitting there unused for years. "So far as I'm concerned, it's a big hunk of useless Cold Iron," Adam said.

"Perfect," Spence replied, taking the smoker by the wooden handle and pulling it against the garage door. He flinched from it, evidently feeling the heat all Cold Iron gave off to elven senses. "I see what you mean."

Target practice.
"I think everyone should go back in the house. We don't know what this weapon is going to do."

Niamh looked hurt. "But I've been trying to get this thrice-damned thing to work for so long, I have!"

Adam sighed. "Okay. Just stay by the door, would you? Everyone else, out."

As his clan complied, Adam hefted the weapon. The aluminum-magnesium alloy made it somewhat lighter than if it were steel, like most human firearms. It looked and felt like an assault rifle should, and might have passed for one if it'd had a clip. The barrel was short and square, resembling a policeman's radar gun. When he brought it up to aim, the stock was a little awkward.
I guess you can't have everything.

Once the garage was empty, he thumbed off the safety. A green LED light near the barrel came on.
Nice features.
Then he aimed at the smoker and pulled the trigger.

Nothing happened.

"Well?" he heard Spence call.

"Got a problem," Adam replied.

Spence came back in and examined the weapon. "It's a focus for node power," he said. "Why don't you tap into the nodes, and direct them to, say, the crystal. That may be why it
needs
a crystal."

"I'll try it," Adam said, but he was already beginning to think the trip to Underhill to reclaim this hunk of metal was a waste of time.

Spence stepped back. Adam brought the weapon up again, this time reaching for the Marketplace nodes, keeping his eyes open, and on the target. Their power reached though the ground, through the soles of his feet, coursed through his body and into the weapon's crystal, which was beneath his left palm.

He pulled the trigger.

A tight beam of node energy shot from the barrel of the weapon and bore directly into the smoker. Sparks flew as the beam tore into the Cold Iron, impaling it, then proceeded into the garage door behind it. A half second later, an explosion shook just on the other side of the garage door, which threatened to shake off its track.

"NO!" Adam shouted, as he released the trigger and brought the barrel down. He already had an idea what the explosion was.

"Adam, what was . . ." Spence said, then stared at the garage door. "Oh, no. We didn't."

"I think we did," he said, feeling ill, giving Spence the weapon. "Hide this somewhere, quick. Before the fire trucks get here. And tell everyone else to hide, too. We're going to have human visitors real soon."

Adam tried to open the garage door via the automatic opener, but it would not budge.
The explosion must have damaged the door. Damn.
He grabbed a fire extinguisher off the garage shelf and ran through the house to the front door.

My ears! I'm still in elf mode!
He paused for a full five seconds, cast the glamorie, and inspected himself in the hallway mirror. Satisfied he was presentable to the humans' world, he ran out the front door to deal with the fire.

As expected, his little Geo was engulfed in flames. The beam had shot through the door and struck the car's gas tank. Adam started spraying madly, hoping the extinguisher had enough of a charge. In the distance, he heard the wail of fire engines.

Great,
he thought as he sprayed.
My tapes! They're history now.

The car was completely engulfed in flames. His extinguisher did little against the fire, which had spread to a few places in the front yard. When the car exploded, pieces of Geo had blown into the street, but the car was still basically intact. Broken glass littered the driveway.
Looks like the car's history, too.

As he beat back the fire, he felt strangely unmoved at the demise of his car. Under his frantic struggle to put the fire out was the unrestrained joy at finding something, anything, to use against Zeldan Dhu and his Unseleighe Court. In the flames of his burning car, he imagined Zeldan's face.

A fire truck, followed by a second larger one with a ladder, pulled up in front of the house. Firemen poured off with more extinguishers and started hosing the car down with white fog. They soon had the fire under control, and as they put out the last of the flames, Samantha McDaris pulled up in her cop-issue Chevrolet Caprice.

She had her badge opened and displayed as she walked up to the fireman who appeared to be in charge.

"This is my house, and this is my son. What in the world is going on?" she said, casting a brief questioning look toward Adam.

The fireman looked apologetic. "Perhaps you'd better ask him. A neighbor called in the fire, and when we got here, the car here was burning."

"I . . . don't know how it started," Adam said. "Honest."

"This car's a hazard," the fireman continued. "A tow truck is on the way. And we'll have to call the police."

"I
am
the police," Samantha said impatiently. Then Adam sensed a change in the man's attitude.

Sammi's using magic on him,
Adam thought, but kept his mouth shut.
She knows what she's doing.

"On the other hand," the fireman said, "since
you're
here, we won't need to call the police. The fire's out. I'd still have it moved, if I were you."

"Very well," Samantha said, and the firemen declared the job finished and left.

"In the house," Samantha said shortly.

Once inside, Adam found that everyone had done as he'd said—everyone was so well hidden he didn't even know where they were.

"Now tell me, what the
hell
happened?" Samantha said, dropping her purse and keys on the kitchen counter.

Adam told her.

"You've got to be kidding."

Adam smiled weakly and tried to sound apologetic. "Well, at least it works. It went right through that old smoker."

Samantha rolled her eyes. "At least we've found something useful for that thrice-damned waste of space."

Moira and Spence appeared, Spence holding the weapon, as the others came out of various hiding places in the house. Petrus startled everyone by popping out of the cabinet at their feet.

"So the damned thing works," Samantha said, holding it up. "Not very heavy. Aluminum?" Spence nodded. "Good thing. I wonder if that college kid from Berkeley had elves in mind when he made this."

The phone rang, and Moira picked it up. As the caller spoke, her face darkened.

"What is it?" Adam asked, but he sensed who it might be.

"Okay, okay . . ." Moira said. "Call an ambulance. You already did? Good." She looked up. "It's Daryl. His brother overdosed. He thinks he's dead."

"Let me talk to him." Adam reached for the phone, and heard sobbing on the other end. "Daryl? It's Adam. What happened?"

"Adam?" Daryl said, after a moment. "It's Justin. He got into some stuff. Black Dream."

For a moment, the King didn't know what to say.

"Don't hang up," Daryl said. "I need to talk to you. You know how you've been telling me about the drugs. How they're going to kill me?
They killed Justin instead. . . . 
"

More crying, into which Adam spoke, uncertain if his words were getting through. "It's okay. . . ."

"No, it's
not
okay. Hold on." A long pause followed.

"What's going on?" Moira said. "Do we need to go over there?"

Daryl came back on. "Adam, some really weird shit has been going on. And I'm not talking about the drugs."

"I'm listening," Adam said, aware that Moira and Samantha were discussing whose car to take.

"I'm in deep, real deep. I've been selling quantity through my other job at the New You Fitness Center. There's something weird about that place. . . ."

Tell me about it.

"I've been seeing, like, ghosts and demons and shit. I think they're aliens."

Adam became acutely aware of his own pointed ears. "Really?" he replied, trying to sound like he cared. Still it came out sounding like he thought Daryl was nuts.

"There's something big going down. With my dealer. Your mother is a cop. I think . . . she should know about it."

"Okay," Adam agreed. "What's going to happen?"

"I'm not sure. Mort said they were going to call me here tonight."

"I see," Adam said.
I'll ask who "Mort" is later.

"The ambulance is here," Daryl said. "I gotta go."

"We'll be there in a few minutes." Adam hung up the phone.

"Well?" Samantha said. "What did he have to say?"

His mother sounded hostile toward Daryl, but then he didn't really blame her. "It sounds like he's ready to turn in some people."